NAS 10 Questions with Alanasilwaer

It's time for the NAS 10 Questions! Today, let's get to know Alanasilwaer, a pop artist from Turkey with K-Pop influences.

The track "City Calling" is featured in the New Artist Spotlight Family of Playlists.

Link To New Artist Spotlight Playlists:

https://www.newartistspotlight.org/playlists 

1. Tell us a little about where you are from and what you are currently doing.

Hello! I'm from Turkey and after releasing 6 songs monthly I'm taking a little break as of July and hoping to come back with better music. Also, I'm an English Education major so I teach English classes online from time to time.

2. What inspired you to start playing and making music?

As far as I remember I always sang and danced. My priority was music and art. I was quite interested in all forms of arts overall from acting to design, painting, music etc. I remember skipping classes to go to concerts. Even stayed out all night because me and my friend didn't have left any money after the bus and concert fee and we had to stay one night in that city. I have a song about that called Night in the Morning (Morning in the Night). I did also attend school choirs, at some point took classes to go to music school, as well as trying to form a band several times which all failed. However, I think me wanting to join My Chemical Romance and started to write my own lyrics around 11 years old was what started this journey. For a really long time I only wrote lyrics, and had melodies but couldn't play any instruments (although I went to courses) so I was always looking out for someone to do that part, which didn't go well. Fast forward to my university years, I met these K-Pop artists who are around my age and are composing and writing lyrics which gave me the courage to learn how to use DAWs. The reason why I haven't tried to learn one up until that point is because for some reason I always associated such programs with very professionals, people who are quite older? I don't know why. However, after seeing such artists using these programs I started to learn as well. It was around 2018 and ever since I tried FL Studio, Cubase, Reaper, Ableton so and so on. I first released my song on Soundcloud and YouTube in 2018 and it was bad, bad. Lots of mistakes and for some reason I had a problem with making a beat, or creating drums. I just couldn't do it. At some point I was so fixated on how to do the drums and beats that even in my dreams I was asking these artists about how to make beats. Of course the response to my released songs was not good so I got discouraged, also had a lot of school work, so I took a break like 2 years and then discovered BandLab which had these tools for drums and beat. That really helped. I released around 11 songs in a year, they were a bit better than my first ever releases, on BandLab. Again, the response was not much and I hit some sort of plateau thinking music is not working for me although that's all I wanted, I kind of gave up. About 1 or 2 years later, I had this bad experience and a mistake of going to a country that wasn't for me ( I also have a song about that called city-midnight) and then I realized that I never actually put importance to music both financial and time wise. After this realization I searched about how to upload music on official platforms. Finally, last year, on 19th June 2023, I uploaded my first ever release. This time the problem of mixing and mastering came up. After I had unsuccessful tries to find an engineer, I decided to learn and do my best with it until I find someone I can work with. Hopefully, next releases I will be working with an actual sound engineer on mixing and mastering.

𝟯. Who are your biggest influences?

I started with My Chemical Romance but throughout the years I have listened so many genres from Hip-Hop to Metalcore... I think they all had an influence on me overall but lately, for the last 6 years, I can say definitely self-producing artists like Epik High, Suga of BTS, Sunmi, Hyukoh, B.I, Kenshi Yonezu and artists like Oasis, The Killers, Anri, Last Alliance, Imagine Dragons, Rise Against... I can definitely say that I do take a lot of inspiration from Korean and Japanese artists mostly, also I'm a huge fan of City Pop. My first ever release (glass fairy) was inspired by these two songs: Black Pearl by Sunmi and Fairy of Shampoo by TXT both Korean artists.

4. What are your goals in the music industry?

It's been only a year so far and I'm hoping to grow more as a musician both skill wise and audience wise as well as reaching out to more people who are like me. This is one of the reasons I make music to connect with similar people like me but essentially getting recognized for my work is my goal as all the other artists. Specially, being able to work with artists that influenced me so far, I think that is one of my biggest goals. I see myself more working behind the scenes like producing part but I'm open to all the opportunities of course.

5. Tell us about your creative process when you make new music.

 The reason I go single by single is that each song has its own color and theme so I can't put them in one album. Each song comes with its own image for me. I also do the album artwork myself as well whether it would be painting or editing them on photoshop. The songs come out of nowhere to be honest, like one day I'm doing something and some melody and lyrics pops up and I record them on my notes. However, the hardest time for me to record them is before I fall asleep like just in that moment some lyric or melody comes in and I don't have the heart to let it go because I know I won't remember them in the morning. There are also melodies that I got from dreams. To be honest there is a lot of drafts I have but as a one person project, literally, things are going slowly but with time I want to release them all. Other times, and mostly, I get overwhelmed because of my feelings and the lyrics just write themselves, it's like journaling. However, usually the lyrics come first. There were few times where I matched lyrics to melodies but matching melodies to lyrics is more enjoyable and feels more authentic. As I do everything myself from start to finish, things get chaotic sometimes and I do get lost and it is one of the reasons why my craft is not as its best, yet. The reason behind is that I don't have an accessible community near me that I can ask right away or get help. Also I'm a bit shy and anxious when comes to meeting new people but hopefully as time goes by I will find more people like me and a community. In the meantime, I try to take breaks after I record my vocals, I usually work on 2 songs at a time so that I can switch between them when I get bored or my ears get used to the song. I usually have an overall idea of how to record what to record for vocals so it doesn't take much time but sometimes you come up with something new or sometimes the music needs to change because you overestimated your vocal range and skills haha. It's one of the reasons why I would like to be more in the behind the scenes maybe like a composer or producer although I like to sing. I do definitely use manual fixing for my vocals for pitch as I'm the only one in the recording part I can't get an instant feedback unless I listen after sometime so it really saves time for me to fix them manually. When it comes to album art work, 90 percent of the time I already have an idea so either I draw and paint, or edit the photos I took, on photoshop. When it comes to mixing and mastering, my computer drives me crazy sometimes not going to lie haha, specially the last song ''city, calling'' was a huge project for such machine. Still, I manage to complete the process somehow and although that I have some basic steps for mixing and mastering, there were a lot of times my method was f around and find out because each song is different both genre wise and other elements wise.

6. What is your all-time favorite song?

That is hard, probably everyone said that haha, but sad times makes you bond with certain songs and artists more so I will go with Epik High - Home is Far Away (ft. Hyukoh). The original title in Korean is ''Empty Car(Taxi)'' and it shows the exhaustion of walking to reach where you want to be so you are looking for an empty taxi so that you can rest a bit and make things easier. The song itself depicts the burnout and being tired of trying to reach somewhere. Although it's in Korean if you look at the translation of it you will understand what I mean. But then again you may not because I do speak Korean so maybe it's just me because certain words in certain languages makes more impact like hits you in the feelings more. I don't know why. Overall, the depiction of the situation, the words that are used as it is important because each word carry certain emotions, energies, they really did well. I'm not even mentioning the vocals and the music as they are amazing as well. What makes a song mind blowing for me is usually the lyrics so I'm always more focused on that, I love talking about lyrics I even have a YouTube channel where quite literally fangirl over lyrics.

7. What is the best advice you have either given or received in terms of music? 

I'm still trying to surround myself more with artists, musicians like myself so most of the time I try to figure out things on my own so this is not really an advice but I do watch a lot about recording in the studio videos of other artists and follow what they have done or doing currently to see if there is anything I can learn. Lately, Korean artists are releasing more and more recording and behind the scene videos which helps me a lot in motivation wise. It's also kind of like an advice, seeing how they deal with certain things. Also it's fun to be honest, to watch their process because I can relate to them a lot of the times. However, now that I remember, there is one moment that I remember talking with another musician briefly where I asked about ''What do you do when you get stuck and the song you work on starts to sound bad to you?'' and the answer was quite simple ''Just take a walk and do something else for a while''. I don't know it might be helpful for someone out there as well!

8. Proudest accomplishment?

I really would like to say that my first ever release last year was quite a big thing for me music wise, like having my own Spotify page and telling people that I'm a musician. However, to be honest, I still have a long way to go so I will say I don't have one, yet. Hopefully, I will have more in the near future.

9. Just for fun! What's been your most embarrassing moment so far?

Oh! Definitely, the moment I released my first release, having not listened for over a month, realizing that it is actually quite bad. Like so many mistakes here and there, the quality is not how I remembered, I was like ''Did I really sent this? Like was I even in the room?'' I was so embarrassed of the song for a long time but now it's funny.

There is one more, every time I remember this I find it quite funny. I was singing Wiing Wiing by Hyukoh and there is one line says ''Wiing wiing, goes the mayfly, it flies far away as if it’s laughing at my sadness'' and at the exact same time, as I was breathing in to sing, a small fly went into to my mouth. It was so funny.

𝟭0. Tell us about your lowest and highest points in music so far.

Lots of lowest points and giving up to be honest, haha. I gave up and came back, hated music and all the artists who made it specially people around my age, regretted a lot of stuff, felt like I was late to everything, felt tired, blamed myself, my situation, other people... etc. you know your regular artist struggles. My highest point so far is seeing that I improved a bit more with each song, and again probably my first ever release. Other than that still growing and new artist here, so again, hopefully I will have more highest points to tell in the near future.

Stream "City Calling" now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7gGNzuybe8

and follow their socials

https://linktr.ee/alanasilwaer

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